I recently spoke with Ola Ryange, CEO of The Rynge Group and author of The Rynge Blog. Ola was recognized as one of the top 30 personal branding experts to follow on Twitter by personalbrandingblog.com In this interview we cover how to develop your own personal brand and the importance of personal branding for small companies.
When did you realize the importance of personal branding? What inspired you to become an expert?
Actually my background in Personal Branding has its roots in my own personal development. When I was in college (around 1996-97), a number of events took place that boosted my personal development. I became much more secure with myself and started to understand my core values. I used the definition of personal branding as a framework for working with the evolution of a person.
Your background is in entrepreneurship and startups. Where does personal branding fit in for smaller companies?
I strongly believe in interpersonal relations for building personal brands. And a great part of business creation and growth is networking with clients, collaboration partners, investors etc. By creating a strong brand that communicates trust and confidence, these relations will be stronger. Without trust you will not obtain either customers, partners or an investor. Your brand is therefore one of the greatest assets of your venture and creating a stable business.
How successful has personal branding been in advancing your own career?
It has been very important for my career, as well for my personal life. A concrete example is that I started my first company when I was 17, working with marketing (online and offline) – a company that I have been running on the side until 2006, when I went to focus 100% on developing my business full time. In my day to day work now, my reputation and networking skills are the single most important factor for attracting new clients.
I would like to emphasize that for me, Personal Branding is not about social media or making yourself famous in your area of expertise. Of course these are parts of the Personal Branding process. But the essential part that I think is left out of the discussion today is the importance of returning every now and then to look at who you really are and your core values, rather than a quick-n-dirty “let’s get a twitter account” or “vanity urls” – these are not the most important part of your personal brand.
What are the 3 most important personal branding steps our readers should take?
- Forget about quick fixes. This process takes time, and should not be skipped. Identify your core attributes, values and skills as well as how to deal with attributes instilled in you by society and other elements in your surroundings.
- Personal Branding is interpersonal. Social media is a great tool for a lot of things, but the core of your personal branding strategy should be networking, meeting with people in real life and learning how to communicate in a way that your counterpart gets the feeling and message you want to give him or her. Of course, twitter, LinkedIn etc. are great sources to find people to meet.
- Sharpen the saw. Regularly go through your personal branding strategy, both the part of getting to know yourself as well as your brand marketing strategy to identify changes in yourself and how to continuously improve yourself (known as kaizen in TQM).
Find out more about what Ola does at The Rynge Group and be sure to follow @rynge on Twitter.
